Hand of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  They’d both been posted on “ready wagons,” Voldovan’s oldest and most leaky conveyances. Below and behind them, the steep-sided wagon beds were crammed with spare wheels and axles, boards and buckets and mallets, all wedged in with spare carrychests and barrels of water, with haybales thrust atop everything. Spare weather-sheets of old, patched ship sails were lashed down several layers deep over the arched tops of both wagons, and everything stank of fish oil, sheepfat grease, and old sweat.

  Their request to go disguised in armor had vastly amused Voldovan—and pleased him, for their presence on the ready wagons freed up two of his real guards for outrider duty, rather than—as he put it—“a-wasting them to stand as targets when they could be doing something useful!”

  Shandril had even drawn comfort from the leering pair of grizzled guards who’d hung extra plates of armor to clang and clatter down Shandril’s front, and smeared greasy fingers around her jaw to make her look unshaven and “more’ve a man, har har!” One of them had taken care to lean close and momentarily pluck out the tiniest silver harp on a chain that she’d ever seen, and introduced himself baldly as “Arauntar.”

  The other had sent her staggering with an adjusting slap at the shoulder-plates her breastplates were hanging from and announced grandly, “Beldimarr, at yer service—hands an’ jaws an’ I’ve one o’ them little trinkets, too!”

  Beldimarr sported a long, snakelike white scar that ran from his right temple right down his neck, to disappear somewhere in the unwashed hairiness below. Narm stared at it in fascination until the grizzled caravan guard thrust his face into the young mage’s, bestowing on Narm the fruits of breath enriched by rotting scraps of meat amid rotten teeth, and snarled, “Starin’ at me, pretty boy? Well, begone with yer hungry eyes—’tis women I fancy, almost as much as—hah—they fancy me, now!”

  Shandril ducked her head away to hide her mirth at Narm’s incredulously gagging expression, but she needn’t have bothered—Arauntar roared with laughter enough for them both. When he could speak again—still hooting with occasional glee—he slapped a crossbow into her midriff with enough force to drive her breathless, and announced gruffly, “This way up, see? An’ you can crank it tight an’ ready, but mind you loosen it at every stop, after you wind another tight an’ ready—so as to switch back an’ forth, so they’re slower to break, see? An’ no loading of it until you’ve a foe to fire at, for I do perceive that y’art violently carried away from sanity—an’ I’d just as rather I didn’t get violently carried away by a stray bolt from you!”

  Orthil Voldovan had come up to inspect his two new standing targets at that moment, with a wolflike smile and the cheerful words, “Behold: Here be a pair of strange beasts, which folk of experience call ‘fools.’ ”

  Now, with her teeth clacking together every few breaths from the crashings of the journey—she’d already nipped her own tongue painfully, and they weren’t even out of Scornubel yet!—Shandril was heartily glad her crossbow wasn’t loaded … and in full agreement with old Orthil about she and Narm being fools, too. The drover down beside her knees was a thin, sour man by the name of Storstil, and Narm had a stouter one, Narbuth, who never stopped talking and telling jokes, even to himself.

  No family or clan names were given among Voldovan’s men—this seemed to be an unwritten but firm caravan rule—and they were all men, too. Narm and Shandril had counted thirty-two wagons, not counting the cook wagon, Voldovan’s own “strongwagon” where the smallest, most valuable cargoes were carried (“coffers o’ gems,” as Beldimarr had described the strongwagon’s load, “and maps ’n’ treaties ’n’ coins an’ things—together wi’ boxes of scorpions and deadly biting vipers, to give thieves somethin’ final to think about, har har”), and the two ready wagons they rode on. Everyone riding with the caravan had been paraded before the guards so disappearances and uninvited guests among them could be noted, later, but Shandril couldn’t say she remembered every face and name, or even all of those who’d looked suspicious … because that had been more than half of them.

  Now, they could see few wagons and fewer faces of the riders, either—both because of the clouds of dust, and because of the improvised cloth masks almost everyone wore over their faces, against that dust. Shandril’s eyes were already stinging as they finally left Scornubel behind, with its shouting traders and running, mud-clod-hurling boys, and gazed out on what would become a very familiar view, ahead of them: a wide vista of hills and mountains, distant and haze-shrouded off to the left, nigh the sea, and nearby and soaring to their right. Open wilderlands, of rolling hills and scrub forest, with a line of dust running ever ahead of them: the Trade Way, a-crawl with caravans.

  The hills around them were alive with brigands and raiding bands of bugbears, orcs, and goblins, the guards had delighted in telling every client riding with the caravan—and this was monster country, too. It was a long way to Triel, the next settlement of any size on the road—and as they passed the ashes and tumbled stones of a few burned and long-abandoned steadings, Shandril could guess why. Anything that wasn’t well-armed and on the move in this lawless lower end of the Sword Coast was a sitting target waiting to be plucked. Suddenly she was grateful for the dust and the din around her and pleased to be rolling and bouncing along in the midst of thirty-odd groaning wagons. ’Twas comforting, though she knew it shouldn’t be: unlike some of the small, fast caravans of a dozen wagons or even half that many, they could outrun nothing and hide nowhere. All they could do was fight whatever came at them. If it used bows, and there were a lot of them around her right now, some of them possibly in the hands of folk who knew who she was and what she bore within her, she might not even be able to use spellfire against that “whatever” or whoever.…

  Shandril sighed, thrust aside such gloomy thoughts, and peered all around, through the dust, like a guard with any wits at all should.

  Orthil was shouting at someone and waving one of those massive, corded arms, indicating that despite the heavy brush, his outriders should spread out to each side of the road and move ahead. Reluctantly two of the younger guards spurred their horses forward, and Voldovan promptly plucked a horn up from his belt—it remained fastened there, on long leather straps of its own, Shan noticed—and blew it, in a high, clear call.

  Both of the outriders replied with horn-calls of their own—and when they were done, two more sounded from the rear.

  Voldovan nodded and hooked his horn back into place. Shandril concluded that she’d be hearing those horns a lot during the days ahead. The caravan master’s head was never still, she noticed. He seemed to spend most of his time peering at hilltops and gullies ahead and behind, but also from time to time he rode his huge horse through the caravan, glancing sharply here and there—almost as if he feared treachery as much among his clients as attacks from as-yet-unseen, lurking perils of the wilderland around them.

  Excitement—nay, apprehension—was so strong in Shan as Scornubel disappeared in the rolling hills behind them that she could taste it and was almost sickened by it … but as the day wore on and the hot sun climbed the sky overhead, it faded into a wearying, lulling monotony of being bruisingly jolted and nigh-deafened among the snorting, head-tossing beasts and ever-swirling dust. She could see, now, why everything—even the crossbows she and Narm held—were tethered to ring-bolts on the wagons, for ’twas all too easy to nod off and let something fall … and all too dangerous to leap down from a wagon and try to snatch something in the dust, with the wagons moving steadily and ponderously along like a purposeful herd of so many rothé.

  Highsun—or rather, the next stream of goodly size they came to after the sun was at its beating height—meant a rest for the beasts and the folk riding in the wagons but not for the guards. This stopping place had been used by countless caravans before, and both outlaws and prowling beasts knew it. Even before the horn-calls were ringing out to slow and turn in, and Voldovan was turning himself into a whirlwind of shoutings and cursing pointings to avoid co
llisions between slowing and turning wagons, the guards were down from their saddles with their mounts swiftly and expertly hobbled and were fanning out into the surrounding brush to look for lurking dangers and to mark privy-hollows.

  Arauntar came creaking along through the brush with a wickedly curved sword in one hand and a handbow-gun in the other, all grim business now, moving up and down the widening ring of guards. He gave Narm and Shandril a nod of approval because they’d heeded his earlier order to stay close together (“So pr’haps two dolts can serve as one fumbling guardsword”) and passed on into the treegloom—to be followed, a few moments later, by Beldimarr.

  Narm nearly choked in fear at the sudden, silent appearance of the second Harper, but Beldimarr gave him a calm nod, stepped around Shandril without saying anything, and stooped to duck under the fronds of a huge fern.

  Then he froze as a low, blatting horn-call rose out of the woods ahead. “Trouble,” he snapped, whirling back to Narm and Shandril. “Fall back straight that way, until you can see the wagons, an’ then hold there until Orthil or one of us tells you different—or something you need to fight comes right at you!”

  Without another word Beldimarr whirled back under the fern again and was gone. Narm and Shandril exchanged glances, then did as they’d been told, casting fearful glances around at the forest as they went. It seemed alive with snapping sounds and rustlings, now, but that could just be all the guards on the move, and not a foe.

  Or it could be a lot of foes moving in as one.

  After what seemed like a very long time, Orthil Voldovan came striding through the trees to Narm and Shandril. “Either of ye driven horses harnessed to a wagon before?” he barked.

  He didn’t wait for them to shake their heads but whirled around again, waving at them curtly to accompany him.

  They had to run to keep up with the caravan master as he strode along through underbrush and through branches, obviously not caring if he was heard a hundred miles off or broke every bough that dared to hang in his path. They climbed a little tree-cloaked ridge and plunged down into a wooded hollow beyond it, where a grim ring of guards was standing looking down at something in their midst.

  Someone was dead.

  The guards parted as Voldovan stamped up to them, and he whirled to glare at Shandril and take her by the arm, to point down and ask, “Ye didn’t have anything to do with this, now, did ye?”

  Storstil would never grimace at Narbuth’s babblings again. The drover lay huddled over a long, gnarled tree root where he’d obviously sat down to relieve himself, a smokeweed pouch and a broken clay pipe beside him, his distinctive red-trimmed, dun-hued tunic strewn with spilled smokeweed. His head was missing—burnt right away to a scattering of ash.

  Narm swallowed and turned swiftly away, to walk a few blind steps through the trees. Shandril went white, swayed in Orthil’s grip, then managed to say faintly, “No. No, Orthil, I did not.”

  The caravan master sighed. “So Arauntar said—good it was for ye that he went from the two of ye on to Pelgryn and then Thorst before finding … this. Better for ye that Pel and Thorst were always between here and where ye were sent—and saw ye not.”

  He turned away, and said over his shoulder, “Leave him for the wolves—after ye search him, Beldimarr, to make sure our Storstil wasn’t carrying any secrets that might have made someone slay him. Bring boots, belt, all pouches and weapons, as usual. Thorst, ye’re a drover now.”

  Thorst looked up at Shandril sharply, as if measuring her as a foe in a rocking, pitching wagon, then spat into the dead leaves and nodded without saying anything.

  “With me,” Voldovan ordered Narm and Shandril, as he turned to stamp back toward the wagons.

  Other guards fell in around them, and they’d gone perhaps twenty paces together when the caravan master said suddenly, “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. We always lose a few on this run—clients who stray from their wagons at night to rut or empty their innards or have little covert trade-meetings that go wrong, and sometimes even a few in bright daylight, fighting off raids … but one of our own, like this, on our first stop …”

  He shook his head and turned, hard-eyed, to glare at Shandril, then at Narm. He said bluntly, “Don’t be a curse on me, now. This run’s hard enough without deaths at every stop. Though I know what ye can do if ’tis needful, I also know what the lads’ll do to ye if there’re more slayings with no slayers before us … or if the killings go on.”

  They were almost at the wagons when a drover came running out of the camp to meet them, eyes a little wild. “Spells in one of the wagons, Orthil! Two dead, at least, and ’tis still burning—folk in the wagons around all shouting that they saw this man run off into the woods or that one, or five come in, or a dozen devils dancing about with tails a-waving!”

  Voldovan quickened his pace into a run. Narm and Shandril, with all the other guards, stayed with him.

  As they came out into the sunlight and a sea of frightened faces, the caravan master looked back at Narm and Shandril again. “Don’t curse me,” he said in a voice of dark promise. “I’m warning ye.”

  “Orthil,” one of the guards snarled from right behind Narm. “What shall we do with these two?”

  Voldovan waved a dismissive hand the size of a shovel. “Nothing,” he snapped, “for now.”

  6

  WILD RIDES

  After the bear and the behir we come to the brigand. Vermin, the lot of them! Almost as black and strangling a plague upon honest trade as marauding orcs in summer, or wolves in winter—or caravan-masters any day of the year.

  Srusstakur Thond, Master Mapmaker

  Know and Vanquish Thy Foe

  Year of the Saddle

  “One wizard I know about,” Orthil Voldovan snapped, “but he was with me—with all of us, and plenty of us watching him suspiciously, too. I ask all of my clients if anyone knows spells or has a wand along, and they all stare at me like so many moon-faced, innocent sheep, and I know three or four of them at least are lying. Mayhap a dozen—or all of them! We’ve no time to spare for searches and hot words and beating truth out of anyone, but if this goes on, we’ll make time. Right now, we must be at Face Crag by nightfall, or the dark’ll catch us strung out along the road in the Blackrocks, and it won’t matter who slaughtered who in a wagon, because we’ll have orcs and goblins and probably ghouls, too, clawing and hacking and stabbing at us as they please, up and down the wagon line! Move, you motherless jacks! Whip the beasts, and if any wagon lags, pass it by and keep on!”

  The caravan master waved at the road ahead, his gesture vicious with anger, and guards spurred away obediently. Voldovan raised his eyes to Shandril and said grimly, “I didn’t gather the lads here because ye needed to hear, but because I wanted them all to know ye heard. Take great care, for thy own safety, that this wagon slows not and that nothing ill befalls Thorst here.”

  “Voldovan,” Shandril said with a sigh, “I want to go on living as much as you do. I mean no one in the world any ill, so long as they leave me alone. I get so tired of folk not believing that.”

  “Tired enough to cook them where they stand, hey? Well, we may need ye to do just that to someone ere we make Waterdeep—but mind ye warn me first, and don’t go blasting folk down whenever I’m looking elsewhere.” The caravan master turned his own horse away, and Shandril sighed, felt the weight of someone else’s cold gaze, and looked down—right into the eyes of Thorst.

  “The Master told us you were some sort of fire-mage,” he whispered, his glare dark with anger, “and you look like a little lass who should be in a kitchen somewhere, or washing out chambers in an inn. You’ve no spellbooks along, no wand I’ve seen, so what are you, really?”

  He shifted his hand on the reins so the cloak on his lap fell away—to reveal what he held in his other hand: another small bowgun, loaded with a wicked bolt that was pointed right into her face.

  “I’m not trying to slay you,” he added, “yet. I’m trying to stop
you doing to me what happened to Storstil.”

  Shandril kept very still. “I,” she said, more calmly than she felt, “can call up a very powerful fire-magic that I can’t quite control. I can’t tell you much more than that, because I don’t know much more than that. I’m on my way to Waterdeep to try to find out. The Zhentarim and some other folk are after me because they want this magic, but so far as I know, none of them know I’m here, along on this caravan. I don’t want to use any magic that I don’t have to, in case someone recognizes it and thereby learns that I’m here—and I certainly haven’t used any of my fire on that wagon or on Storstil or anyone else since I made that deal with Orthil in the Tankard in front of all of you.”

  Thorst frowned. “That makes me suspicious, too,” he said. “Why did he settle for the paltry passage fee you offered?”

  “If I answered that,” Shandril said, “I’d be guessing. You’d best ask Orthil himself.” She looked up at the sky, and added innocently, “Perhaps he was overwhelmed by my beauty.”

  Thorst snorted, and gave her an unlovely grin. “I like you, Lady Mysterious. At least you don’t shriek or come the high-and-mighty indignance, like most of the wenches who buy passage with us.” He turned the little crossbow away from her, carefully unloaded its dart, and added, “Right, then. Just don’t be sending any scorching my way.”

  “You have my promise on that, Thorst,” the unlikely looking guard replied formally, startling the drover into peering up at her again.

  “I hope we make this camping place Voldovan’s so frantic to reach, in time,” she added, as the wagon crashed over a particularly violent array of bumps and potholes.